We were up by 9:00 the next morning ready to call the owner of our rental property armed with questions concerning leaking gas and dripping ceilings. The beginning of the conversation went like this:
Susan: "Hello Barbara (Name changed to protect the innocent), this is Susan, the renter staying in your lovely home in New Buffalo."
Barbara: "I hope you're not calling with a problem! We haven't had a problem in the two years we've been renting!"
We rolled our eyes, but the rest of the conversation went a tad bit more smoothly. Yes, she knew of the leak.
Barbara: "We paid a plumber a lot of money to fix that."
Susan: "Well, you better get your money back!"
We agreed not to use the shower, but she assured us the rest of the bathroom was usable. We did not want plumbers out working on it while we were there so she said she would have them out after we left and before the next guests arrived. We don't believe that she truly understood that parts of plaster were dropping, but that wasn't our problem.
She knew about the gas fireplace shooting out blue flames.
Barbara: "Oh, that's the pilot light. We leave that on because it's so hard to light otherwise. I'm worried it will blow up in my husband's face sometimes. That's why we just leave it on. There isn't any problem with that. We leave it on all year long."
She told us to just take off the pool cover when we arrived and to put it back on when we left. We didn't bother to tell her that the pool was never locked and we decided not to gripe about the dirt in the house. We did mention all the food and drink and she told us that everyone thinks they will consume that and never do so enjoy if we wanted it.
She was quite apologetic about the leak so we felt much better after hanging up. Susan and I took our cups of coffee outside on the screened in porch and sat out there for the next several hours enjoying the woods, the quiet, the rainy weather and the cool air.
Eventually, we hiked down to the pool in the late afternoon. There was a family of three there so the cover was already off. The girls hopped right in and Susan and I lounged in some chairs. We lasted three minutes before the mosquitoes started nibbling. Susan sprayed around our chairs and we settled back down.
Susan's motto for the trip was "Safety first" so I was quite taken aback when she started chatting with the father of the family.
Father: "Do you live here?"
Susan: "No, I'm from Indiana. We're renting from Barbara."
Father: "Hmmm...Barbara. Which house is that?"
Susan: "The third one down"
Realizing she had lost sight of her motto, Susan changed the subject and quizzed him about his life, but the damage was done. From then on whenever we returned to the house we would ring the doorbell and pretend that our husbands were too lazy to answer or that they were still off fishing. Just in case the father got any strange ideas.
On the way back from the pool it started pouring and the mosquitoes chased us all the way home. We showered, left and went into town where we ate dinner at the Stray Dog, a place Susan had eaten at several times. After dinner, we drove around town, stopped in at the grocery for odds and ends, and hurried home to our television, our nightly calls from the husbands, and our bedtime of 2:00 AM.
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